KSelected Species
by ThatClutzsarahh
Summary: AU. K-selected species: the selection of combinations of traits that trade off the quantity and quality of offspring to promote success in particular environment. To them, that's all they are.
1. Chapter 1

**so this is a story i thought of while sitting in my APES class. I thought it was different from my usual tales. Anyway, i wrote it out and i like it, so please, tell me what you think! :D i'm dying for 11/4! but still GO GIANTS! **

**Summary: ten-year-old Olive and Nick enjoy the sun for the first time in a long time**

**Warnings: K+. pretty dark stuff. **

**Disclaimers: no inFRINGEment intended :)**

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_April 2, 1990_

The sun came out today. Since there is rarely any sun left anymore, they were all let out to play in the large recess yard. The yard of the testing facility looks just like a schoolyard; tire swings and tall artificial trees, a play structure with a hovering elevation disk, and turf field for games like capture the flag and football. And finally a large fake sand box, configured and programmed to look like an ancient Mexican beach complete with pearly white grains of sand and soft realistic waves. To any small child, the place looked perfect. And to them, it did.

Ten-year-old Olive ran from the doors of her testing wing and straight for the monkey bars on the play structure. Her long blonde locks were twisted into a braid that ran down the back of her black smock dress that she wore. She was the fastest of all the testing subjects let out at that time, and it had been noted well before. She smiled as she touched the monkey bars first, swinging up onto the top of them with almost cat like movements. She had already forgotten the side effects the drugs left in her ten-year-old body as she smiles down at her other ten-year-old companion, Nick.

Nick was a scraggly boy, thin and lean for his age of ten, with small bony bird-like wrists and arms. He reached the monkey bars second, but nowhere near the pace that Olivia had set. She was smiling down at Nick from her perch when he reached her. He swung up and grasped the bars, feet dangling over the open pit and swinging back and forth from the bars.

"Olive look," Nick said, swinging up so his knees rested in the crook of the bars and he hung upside down. His hair hung down toward the ground and he smiled, a toothy grin. He had lost his front tooth last night.

Olivia giggled, her little girl giggle and swung down to match his hanging style. Her braid whipped out behind her and nearly touched the ground. By now the other children in their test wing had caught up with them and where playing around. The rarity of the sun and natural supply of Vitamin D felt appealing to their skin and moods and the sharp eyed scientists watched from the stoop of the wing, flat writers on and fingers pressing away at the electronic keys. They observe the children from a distance as if they want to capture what they would be like having been raised as children and not as the test subjects they were.

Olivia swung from the bars with Nick and, after having done so for a while, they began a rousing game of tag with many other children joining in. Olivia seemed to be the leader of the game and she flitted away like a butterfly each time a child neared her to tag her. One scientist noted this and put it in her folder in the system, under aspiring qualities. It was proof that even while the subjects played, they were observed.

Twelve-year-old Peter Bishop watched from the window of his testing room as the children outside played. He had been at work for hours in the physical therapy room, conditioning his body with the large trainer that worked there. Behind the mirrored wall there was another scientist taking the measurements from the wires on his head and from the nano-chips that littered his bloodstream. He wagered that his father was back there too, but Peter would never acknowledge the man as his father. Peter looked back out the window at the children playing and longed to play as well.

"I want to go out," Peter declared, his voice demanding and loud. The trainer looked over to the window.

"No," the PA system said, "Not today."

Peter turned back to the room. He was not about to go through another round of physical therapy.

"I'm done in here then," he said simply, heading for the door. It was no surprise to find it locked. He walked over to the window and stared into the mirror intently, looking through his reflection to find a scientist on the other side.

"Son," the PA announced, the voice of his father. Peter tried not to shudder. He looked into the glass harder.

"I am going to go outside. The sun hasn't been here for a long time."

"Let him out," came his father's voice. Peter immediately was relieved at the thought he was heading outside for some interaction but then felt suspicious about it. What game was his father playing now? He saw the door open and a red haired woman was waiting to take him down the stairs and out into the sunshine.

For the first time that Peter can remember he rode in the elevator of the center. It was an unusual elevator, one that both went down and went to the side. He didn't question the ways it could, only stared at the powder white walls before it abruptly came to a halt on the ground floor. Te doors swung open and Peter could smell the fresh air wafting in from outside. The woman stepped off and he followed, walking at a pace behind her. She pushed open the doors and stepped aside to let him into the warm, natural light.

Olivia ran freely in the sun, twisting away from a girl with blonde hair's grasp. She wound between two trees and turned around, out running the girl by a length. The girl, frustrated that she could not catch Olive, ran back and tagged a boy that Olivia had never seen before.

"You're IT!" the girl screeched happily and scampered off. She hadn't noticed the game stopped. All the children stared at the boy in wonder. They had never seen him before. Who was he?

"Can I play?" he asked gently, "I'm already it."

Nick looked at Olive and shrugged. "Okay," he said, before darting off at full speed. The boy started after a girl with curly brown hair and she ran up the stairs of the play structure.

"This is base," the girl said with a smile. Peter stopped and frowned.

"I didn't know there was a base," he answered. "I'm Peter."

"I'm angelica," she answered with a blush. The scientists noted this. Peter smiled ear-to-ear and nodded before running off after another boy with thick black hair. Once he had danced away and onto base, Peter set his eyes on a blonde girl with a long braid, snickering with the boy that told him he could play. The girl giggled and nudged the boy, but Peter set off after the blonde, who was much faster than the other children he chased.

Olive ran around the trees and ducked behind the sandbox with Peter hot on her tail. He would reach out to tag her but she skirted away faster than he could catch her. Suddenly he devised a plan. He chased her at top speed, following her around as she fled even faster. He knew, somewhere in his mind, that she would slow after getting winded. And pretty soon, after their third lap between the trees, she began to slow and was almost in reach. In one more stride he caught up to her and tagged her back before slamming on the breaks to begin going the other way. But she was much faster and she had tagged him back on the arm, and he caught her wrist in his hand.

"Hey," she said with a grin, "That's holding!"

"Tag backs aren't fair!" Peter protested with mirth in his glance.

"Why?" she said with wide innocent eyes, "Can't catch me?"

"I'm Peter," he answered instead, holding out his hand once he'd dropped hers. Olivia giggled.

"Olive," she answered, shaking his hand in a grin. She tagged him roughly and ran off, already two steps ahead of the twelve-year-old Peter. He smiled and ran off after her.

The scientists noted this.

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reviews, anyone? They're like comfort food for a writer :D_


	2. Chapter 2

**and onto chapter two! I want to thank my lone two reviewers for having faith in me and reading this story! thank you so very very much!**

**Summary: Olive gets a new room, and a reality check**

**warnings: T**

**Disclaimer: NO inFRINGEment intended :D**

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_March 1988 _

Olive used to love her room. With pink plaster covering steel walls and a purple and white flower rug, she had loved it. When she had been four. But now she was seven, almost eight and she no longer wanted to live in the small confines of a pink and purple room. There was simply nothing there for her. She hated how small it was. She hated the colors. But mostly, she hated not having a window.

She told her handler, the person assigned to be her 'mother', that she hated the room. She wanted a window. This woman told her she could see about getting a room with a window. But that had been months ago and now the pink walls were peeling away in her mind. Every time her handler came to get her she would complain about her walls, how the color was fading away and she wanted green walls now, a pastel green. Her handler would smile and nod and before she could give an answer they were always at the location they were heading, whether it was the dining hall or a testing room.

Since Olive doesn't know the days, she doesn't know when her birthday is. All she knows is that once in a while her handler would come in and say 'Happy Birthday' to her and give her a cake with her name on it. Then she would be left to eat it by herself in her room. But on her eighth birthday her room door opened and her handler stood there with a scientist.

"We have a gift for you Olive," the woman said with a smile. Olivia nodded up at her.

"Come with us," she continued, extending her hand out. Olive jumped off her bed without a second thought and took her hand, following as the woman led her down the hall.

"Where are we going?" Olive asked, her hand swinging in her handlers.

"A surprise," she answered as she continued down the white wash halls. Olive followed without question as she was led down the way. The scientist trailed behind them at a distance, typing away on her flat on computer. They had made two twists and finally the woman stopped in front of a door that looked like all the rest. There was a name underneath the number, and it wasn't Olive's.

"This is your new room, Olive," the woman said smiling.

"But what happened to the girl who had the room originally?" Olive asked, trying to see the name better.

"She went to a different room," the woman lied. She pressed her hand to the scanner and the door shot open.

The room was painted with a pastel green. The rug was a soft lavender color, and her bed was pushed over in the corner by the window. A window. Olive screeched happily and ran over to the window and pressed her face to the glass, watching the leaves on the trees fell. Olivia smiled up at her handler and scientist.

"This is the best present ever!" she said. And for the moment she had completely forgotten about the girl whose room it had been and what happened to her.

It took Olivia a while to figure out it wasn't a real window. What gave it away was the snow. Snow was not white, not in her lifetime. She had never seen white snow before and when she woke up and looked out her window to find snow littering the ground she panicked. Had the world started to end? But when she watched it fall, it looked very similar to the ashen gray snow that fell in random patterns she knew it wasn't real. She frowned because of it.

Olive didn't know it wasn't just a fake window, but also an observation table. When she was locked in her room during the day, her handler and her assigned scientist would monitor her behaviors. Mainly she stared at her window, watching the changing scenes outside. Her handler enjoyed changing the picture for her because she got to interact with Olive more. But one day, after an injection of a trial drug, the handler watched her with the scientist and watched as she just lay down and didn't move.

"What's wrong with her?" the woman asked, having developed a bond with the girl. It was strictly against the rules to bond with test subjects, yet she had done it. The scientist noted it as well.

"She will be all right," the man said, "The drugs are taking effect in her body."

"She isn't moving," the woman argued, "Is that normal."

"For her, yes."

Her handler shook her head. And watched Olivia lay in obvious pain. She had grown fond of the girl and it was breaking her heart to see this. What was going on in this facility?

One day Olive was in her room with her handler, drawing with crayons. It had been two days after her last injection and her skin had shown signs of a strange bubbling that occurred. Her arm had been wrapped where it had shown and she was content with silence, drawing a picture on her paper.

"Why is the window fake?" Olivia asked, not looking up from her drawing. Her handler, startled, looked at the small girl.

"It's real."

"No, it's not," she said, "I can tell it's fake. There was snow the other day and it was white. The sun came out yesterday, but that's a lie. I've seen the sun only once before."

"That's because your not allowed to see the sun," the woman said.

"Why?" Olive asked.

"It's better in here," she commented, telling the truth.

"How would I know that if I've never been out of here?"

"Because, Olive," the woman said patiently, "Out there, in the big world, it's horrible. There are no nice people to take care of you. There is no sun. If you breathe in the wrong air it can kill you. You have to carry around a mask. In here, it's much better than out there."

Olivia remained silent as she processed the information. The woman knew she had said too much, but she wasn't going to lie to the little girl to make her feel better. She watched as Olivia colored silently. For a long while they remained like that, until Olivia looked up and smiled.

"Will you braid my hair again today?" she said.

"Of course, Olive," she said, moving around behind the little girl. She took her long locks in her hands and started braiding them, humming a tune that would remain in Olivia's head forever.

"You're the best," she said to her handler. She stilled her hands and smiled.

"You know I care about you, very much," she answered.

"I care about you too," Olive replied.

She didn't know it then, but it was the last time Olivia would ever see the woman.

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